Random Sporadic Bursts of Creativity OR Stuff that I can't say too loudly.
Basically, it's a page full of randomness, arbidity, thoughts and words as bizzare as these.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
!
I wake up late on Sundays. Regularly. But today was different. I didn't want to wake up at all. Had an intuition. Wasn't so sure it would be a good one. I woke up. The memory of an unfinished conversation lingered. I thought, "It must be that."
I shrug it off. I brush, pondering. I went about my day as if nothing was wrong. But that conversation kept lurking. It was probably in the air I was breathing. I picked up the phone. Made that call.
It was true. It wasn't a dream. I hurt. I am wistful. And well awake.
"Let's go Neville...", my mom's voice filters through my thoughts. I realise she had been talking for sometime now. I rub my eyes, "Sure mom. You look pretty today."
My mom still tells me, how I was always obsessed with advertising. She tells me how as a child, when a programme on DD ran, I would always watch the ads without batting an eyelid. I mean I would ask for my meals and refills during the Disney hour, but the ad time was never interrupted. I knew every jingle and every ad. I was a media planners wet-dream.
But, now that I am a copywriter, I sometimes find myself cursing my job and my clients and think to myself, why can't my clients accept great advertising? Why can't Indian clients accept award winning work?
Then I recall the great ads we have had.
I asked my mom the other day what she loved about the ad? She said, "I don't know, everything. The girl, the innocence, the jingle. Everything." You have to be warned she thought that insurance and advertising are the biggest con jobs known to man.
Now I wondered how do you deconstruct something as subjective as that. Yet the guys got it right each time over.
Like this.
And like this.
Till they fucked it up after this.
Then there is the other set, the vintage one.
And it's "Remix", which was brilliant and I don't think the firangs will ever get it. EVER.
I wonder if ideas that are truly Indian, which are not a google's perspective of India will ever win international acclaim. I mean Indians are all over the world. Then are to too shy to accept their culture, because they might be ostracized? I mean this ad is all about Indian culture.
And still it never won internationally. Sad.
And then again in India, we have the Hutch ads, which work. Thanks to their TG being the urban Indian, they can afford to pass of intelligent advertising. Then a commercial which is a writer's dream does nothing for the brand.
(Careful with this one. For some vague reason this is an eight minute clip. It's the Sumo Victa ad. If you have seen it, don't click it.)
And this writer's dream got the agency fired in a sense.
And then the new agency does something like this, which is almost the same thing. So if the client was happy with the commercial then why fire the agency?
Then there are days, when I think to myself, my clients do know what they want. How else do they become the number one Insurance Private Life Insurer in India.
So maybe this is the right advertising.
Maybe these spots are the ones that really work. All I can say is that even though I want to do spots like this.
And this must watch.
And a lot lot more. But then maybe this brand advertising really works.
I am just glad I work for an Indian advertising agency.
And if you have stayed through this post, then you need to see this one and remember it.
It's a Saturday and normally I am in office. But today was different. I woke up late. I went to pick my mother up and took her to lunch to one of her favourite restaurants.
Now, we were done. I asked for the cheque. Funnily enough it came to a round figure. Let's say Rs. 800/-. I paid a round figure of, let's say Rs. 1000/-.
The waiter brought back the change. One Rs. 100/- note. And two Rs. 50/- notes.
He must have thought it was subtle. Well, no it wasn't. But the sad part is, I still left a 50. AARGGGHH!!!!
